San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
INSIDE 19-HOUR STANDOFF BETWEEN POLICE, MAN ON ROOF
Resolution was work of Emergency Negotiations Team
For 19 hours, the 36-yearold man on the roof of the apartment building in City Heights simply would not budge.
San Diego police called in a negotiations team, which took it slow all those hours until the man at last climbed down a ladder and surrendered.
The peaceful resolution was a win for the Emergency Negotiations Team — a team made up mostly of San Diego police detectives. It also includes agents from the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Services, as well as California Highway Patrol officers.
At a time when police face increased calls to slow down their response tactics to defuse tense situations, the work of the negotiations team stands out as a prime example.
“This is the ultimate deescalation,” said San Diego police Capt. Bernie Colon, who oversees the team. “It’s almost like a de-escalation team.”
Negotiators on the team deploy to freeway overpasses and the San Diegocoronado Bridge when people threaten to jump to their death. Or to homes when suspects hole up. Often they work hand in hand with SWAT officers. Colon said most standoffs last “just a few hours.”
That was not the case Oct. 21.
According to police, the ordeal began with a report of domestic violence about 2:30 a.m. The man’s ex-girlfriend summoned police to a home on Wilson Avenue near Polk Street.
When officers arrived, the man ran. He darted through backyards, jumping over fences, until he came upon a ladder, which he he used to climb to the top of a roof. He then straddled the ladder over that roof and one on an adjacent two-story apartment building and walked across.
From atop the apartment building on 35th Street near Polk Avenue, he threw roof shingles at officers on the ground. He refused to surrender.
The apartment building he stood atop was evacuated, and a stretch of 35th Street was closed to the public.
Roughly an hour into the standoff, officers called in the Emergency Negotiations Team. The team rolled up in its mobile command center.
Three negotiators, in plain clothes and ballistic vests, got onto the roof of an adjacent triplex of two-bedroom cottages. Among them was a negotiator who spoke Spanish — the man’s native language.
From opposite rooftops, the hours of negotiating began.
Colon said negotiators strive to offer people “the feeling and ability to surrender calmly.” “Usually it’s a matter of getting them to think rationally and comply,” he said.
When someone is standing on the edge of a bridge, negotiators try to get that person to understand that the crisis they face is a temporary problem and that the solution they have in mind is permanent.
Colon said a negotiator’s greatest tool is listening.
In City Heights, one negotiator took the lead while the others on the roof monitored the situation. Colon said backup negotiators make sure the lead stays calm and doesn’t miss anything, such as a suspect reaching for his or her waistband.
From the rooftop, the backup negotiators also relayed information to teammates inside the mobile command center, parked in the middle of the street. Inside the vehicle, equipped with computers and other electronics, negotiators worked to collect as much intel as possible. They researched the man’s family.
They tried to coax him down with messages from his family, but to no avail.
Breakfast, then lunchtime, passed. The negotiators on the roof promised the man food and water — if and only if he surrendered. “If we make them comfortable, they’ll stay up there even longer,” Colon said.
Another team of negotiators took over about 1 or 2 p.m.
“We’re going to negotiate until we’re blue,” police Sgt. Matthew Botkin said as the standoff stretched into the late afternoon.
When a standoff draws out for hours, negotiators evaluate the situation to decide whether to keep at it. They consider whether a threat still exists or whether someone is still suicidal, Colon said.
Because the man was accused of a violent crime — domestic violence — negotiators continued until the end, with a San Diego Firerescue Department engine, its lander extended, and a Psychiatric Emergency Response Team on hand.
They hoped the standoff would end when the sun went down. Instead the man apparently tried to start a fire with a lighter and roof parts he tore up. Officers doused the roof with water.
Colon said it was the cold of the night and fatigue that forced the man, who had been nodding off, to surrender at last. He climbed down a ladder and turned himself over to police shortly before 9:20 p.m.
Officers took him to a mental health facility, then booked him into jail.
Four days later, last Sunday, the weather helped again in another standoff.
Negotiators were deployed at Belmont Park in Mission Beach — where a 21year-old man had jumped a fence, climbed to the top of the Giant Dipper and threatened to jump.
Hours into the standoff, with negotiators on the ground communicating with him through a bullhorn, the man asked for a blanket to guard against the cold winds coming off the ocean. Negotiators promised him one if he surrendered.
So he did. Nearly eight hours into the standoff, he climbed down.
The City Heights standoff stood out in part because of how long it lasted.
A search of the U-T archives turned up a pair of standoffs that lasted more than 19 hours. Both involved hostages.
In February 1990, an 18year-old Colorado man who had been serving time for burglary held a night watchman at gunpoint in a Travelodge hotel room on Harbor Island for nearly 34 hours. SWAT officers ultimately fired tear-gas canisters into the room and rushed inside.
Two years later, a homicide suspect was arrested after a tense 26-hour standoff with police at a Chula Vista medical clinic, where he held hostages at gunpoint.